Turnabout Memories - Part 13

"I have to go over everything that's happened. I have to remember" 

Another Code R: Journey into Lost Memories

Here on this blog, it's a tradition to look back at the reviews and other posts that were published ths year and highlight a few of them. I usually post this list around Christmas, but as my weekly update day is Wednesday, I figured it'd just post it on the usual day then as it's so close... I'm always months ahead with writing posts, but this particular post I always write in December, because sometimes I schedule in extra posts (like Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine) and sometimes I end up shuffling the post schedule, so I usually am not sure about what posts I can refer to in this end-of-year post until.... it's the end of the year.  Of course, some of the eligible posts I wrote way back in 2022 already... This year, I managed to read a few out-of-print authors and works I had been eyeing for some time now, so that was fun. I usually don't really plan what to read in a specific year, so even to me, it's a surprise how a year will end for me, sometimes I basically only read books by authors I already now, sometimes I see a rather noticable influx of authors I had never read before. I'm already in the second half of 2024 when it comes to scheduled posts, and I can already tell you there's gold among some of the posts there! I hope you'll all have a fantastic new year and see you back in 2024!

 

The Best Project Outside The Blog! In 2023!

The Mill House Murders 

 

Yes, this is just the self-promotion category! The very first novel I translated was The Decagon House Murders back in 2015, and now, quite some few years later, I finally got the opportunity to work on its sequel, The Mill House Murders. While The Decagon House Murders was originally published by Locked Room International, it is now currently being published by Pushkin Press, so to be honest, I had no idea at first whether they were interested in continuing the series, and whether I'd be in the equation, but fortunately, Ayatsuji himself also wanted me back on board, and I of course loved to come back to the series, resulting in a release by Pushkin Press earlier this year. Last year, I worked on Imamura's Death Within the Evil Eye, which was the first time I got to work on a sequel to a book I also worked on, but The Mill House Murders still remains a bit special, due to its connection to my first translated novel! The translation of the third book in the series, The Labyrinth House Murders, has already been announced, and once again, I had the pleasure and honor of working on it, so I hope readers here will pick it up too next year!

I'd also of course like to point readers here to the Honkaku Discord Server. It's been running for just over a year now, and it's become a nice place to chat about mystery fiction (not just Japanese). Of course, that's not my accomplishment, but that of the members in the server. It's a pretty easy-going server too, so if that sounds like fun, come have a look: https://discord.gg/z3HMSmf8qd

 

Most Interesting Non-Fiction Book! Of 2023!

Misshitsu Mystery Guide

Okay, I haven't read any other non-fiction mystery-related books besides this one, so this isn't really fair, but still, Iiki Yuusan's guide on the locked room mystery is really a must-read for fans of the locked room and impossible crime sub-genre, I think. In the book, the Ellery Queen scholar presents 50 mystery stories (30 Japanese, 20 foreign) that in his mind showcase the diversity that exists within the sub-genre. The book includes very cool diagrams of the crime scenes for each of the stories (so even for stories that originally didn't feature any diagrams), but what is more interesting, is the fact the book consists of two parts. In the first part, Iiki only introoduces the broad outline of the story in question and explains briefly why he thinks the book should be highlighted, but in the second half, he also spoils the solution of each story, and that allows him to freedom to pick entries based on their solution (and not just the trick), and that allows for some really unique picks for this book, like stories that aren't really impossible crimes until you consider the solution, or going with very experimental locked room mysteries. It's a fantastic book that really deserves a read.

Most Interesting Mystery Game Played In 2023! But Probably Older!

The Case of the Golden Idol

 

I've played a fair amount of mystery games this year. Detective Pikachu Returns was highly anticipated by me because I played the original back in 2016(!) already and had been waiting all this time to get closure on the story. A game like Tantei Bokumetsu (AKA Process of Elimination) was a game I had been wanting to play for a long time, due to its unique premise of a mystery game in the format of a SRPG and I finally got around to it because I wanted to play it before the English version was released. Rain Code was of course a game I had been looking forward to, as it was created by the same people behind Danganronpa. These were all games I liked playing in general, but always had points I found frustrating, or at the very least, they had obvious points that could've been improved. In that regard, I'd have to say Unheard was a very nice surprise, as I had very little knowledge about the game when I started with it, but it was a short, but memorable experience. Ultimately, I do think the most interesting mystery game I played this year was The Case of the Golden Idol, which offers deduction-focused gameplay combined with a rather surprising epic story. And yes, I had to quickly write the review of the game last week so I could feature it in this post!

 

Silliest Clue! Seen in 2023!

Morikawa Goten no Inbou ("Intrigue at the Morikawa Manor") (Detective Conan episodes 1050-1051)

 

Sometimes, you just want something silly. Morikawa Goten no Inbou is a two-parter in the animated series of Detective Conan, penned by Yamatoya Akatsuki. Once you see his name, alarm bells should ring, for while he has written an excellent Tantei Gakuen Q anime original with a locked room set in a sunken ship, his output for Detective Conan has been nothing but insane. The dear man also writes for Gintama, which should give you an idea of how silly he can be. In 2020, I choose his Glamping Kaijiken ("The Curious Glamping Incident") as the silliest mystery I had seen that year, and while on the whole Morikawa Goten no Inbou is not nearly as silly, I would say the final clue Conan presents to the culprit when he explains how he figured out that person was the culprit, has to be one of the most insane, and also outright insulting clues ever. No sane person would ever think to use that as a clue in a mystery story, but Yamatoya does. It's something you'd never expect to come, and it's brilliant.

Best Locked Room Epic! Of 2023!

Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room)

 

I am not specifically a fan of the locked room mystery, but this year, I did happen to read three books that all aimed to be an enormous locked room mystery epic. Of the three, Kamosaki Danro's Misshitsu Kyouran Jidai no Satsujin - Zekkai no Kotou to Nanatsu no Trick (The Murder in the Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms: The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks) has a unique premise, set in a world where murderers know that by using locked room murders, they can't be convicted in a court of law unless the police figure out how they did it (because unless the police can prove how the defendant did it, the impossibility of the crime itself becomes an alibi for every single person) and in this book, we have no less than seven different locked room murders. However, the book is also fairly short, so each room barely gets any time. Kagami Masayuki's second novel Kangokutou ("Prison Island") is a John Dickson Carr-inspired epic of about 1200 pages long, with a series of impossible crimes happening on a prison island isolated from the outside world due to a storm. The extended page count allows Kagami to come up with a very robust setting for most of the locked rooms, and it results in a very epic conclusion where series detective Bertrand explains all the mysteries in hundreds of pages! However, on the whole, I found Tsukatou Hajime's Misshitsu Kingdom the better party. In terms of page count, it's similar to Kangokutou at about 1200 pages, but while Kagami's epic was very closely modeled after John Dickson Carr, Tsukatou uses very Carr-esque impossible crime situations, but at the same time, utilizes Ellery Queen-esque chains of reasonings to drive the plot, and this fusion of these two schools is what really makes Misshitsu Kingdom special in my opinion.

Best Post I Accidentally Deleted And Had To Rewrite Completely!

Kangokutou ("Prison Island")

Kangokutou didn't win in the previous category, but it sure wins here. In over ten years of blogging, never had I accidentally deleted a post I had finished already. I originally read Kangokutou in March of this year, and wrote my rather lengthy review of it soon after that and had the post scheduled for August, but the week before the post would go up, I wanted to change something, and a few wrong keyboard shortcut inputs later, I had accidentally deleted the contents of the post, and allowed the empty post to be saved. Which mean I had to rewrite the whole post from scratch, months after I had read the book in question. And I still think the original version of the post was better, going into more detail into the various crimes that occur in that locked room epic, but alas, we all have to just to be content with the current version of the post.

Best Premise! Of 2023!

Hen na Ie ("A Curious House")

I've read a few books this year with memorable premises. Some were straightforward, but ambitious premises, like the epic locked room mysteries mentioned two categories ago. Some had just inspired settings for the book. Take for example Houjou Kie's Amulet Hotel, a book set at a hotel catering to criminals, allowing for rather unique stories as it's not the usual police doing detective work here, but a hotel detective working for an organization which rather prefers to "clean up" a hotel guest themselves if the guest has violated a house rule to keep things quiet. There are also more fantastical premises I found memorable: In Yonezawa Honobu's The Broken Keel, we have a small kingdom off the coast of Britain that deals with the murder on their king while under attack by immortal Danes, in Kinnikuman Yojigen Sappou Satsujin Jiken ("Kinnikuman: The Four-Dimensional Murder Art Murder Case"), the famous Kinnikuman franchise tackles on the mystery genre by having the superhuman wrestlers entangled in murder cases, and Nitadori Kei's Suiri Taisen ("The Great Deduction War") is basically The Avengers, with detectives with various superpowers gathering to tackle one case. Other memorable reads tackle form: Shirodaira Kyou's Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 2: The Locked Room of the Steel Gang Boss and its spiritual successor Kannagi Uromu Saigo no Jiken ("The Last Case of Kannagi Uromu") by Konno Tenryuu revolve around presenting multiple solutions based on a past murder (in the latter case, a mystery novel with no clear solution), something Komori Kentarou also does with his incredibly fun Comiket Satsujin Jiken, being about a series of murders happening at Comiket among membeers of a doujin circle, with their latest release being a collection of short stories with their intended solutions to a murder in the fictional series Lunatic Dreamers. But in the end, I think Uketsu's Hen na Ie is still the one that managed to surprise me the most with its premise. Floorplans and diagrams are often an important element in a mystery story (see the also aforementioned Misshitsu Mystery Guide), but never had I seen a mystery story that uses floorplans exclusively to tell its story. While the first chapter is by far the best of the whole book, the idea of making the floorplan the star of the story, instead of a supporting role, was inspired, and the result is a very unique book that despite some flaws is very, very entertaining and memorable.

The Just-Ten-In-No-Particular-Order-No-Comments List

- Amulet Hotel (Houjou Kie)

- Comiket Satsujin Jiken ("The Comiket Murder Case") (Komori Kentarou)

- Hakobune ("The Ark") (Yuuki Haruo)

- Semi-Otoko ("The Cicada-Man") (Nemoto Shou)

- Misshitsu Kingdom ("Kingdom of the Locked Room") (Tsukatou Hajime)

- Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle") (Kagami Masayuki)

- Hen na Ie ("A Curious House") (Uketsu)

- Misshitsu Mystery Guide ("Locked Room Mystery Guide") (Iiki Yuusan)

- Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken ("The Sacrifice of the Great Detective: The Peoples Church Murder Case" AKA The Detective Massacre) (Shirai Tomoyuki)

- Tinker-Bell Goroshi ("The Murder of Tinker-Bell") (Kobayashi Yasumi)